U.S.

Report: Arizona hotshots died when property protection trumped safety

PHOENIX -- Arizona forestry officials put the protection of structures and pastureland
ahead of firefighter safety during a raging wildfire that killed 19 members of
an elite firefighting crew in June, a state health and safety investigation
said on Wednesday.

Arizona's Division of Occupational
Safety and Health also found that the Arizona State Forestry Division committed
other workplace safety violations in its management of the blaze in and around
the tiny town of Yarnell, northwest of Phoenix.

"When the employer knew
that suppression of extremely active chaparral fuels was ineffective and that
wind would push active fire towards non-defensible structures, firefighters
working downwind were not promptly removed from exposure to smoke inhalation,
burns, and death," according to the report presented to the Arizona
Industrial Commission.

The division proposed penalties of
$559,000, and the Arizona Industrial Commission voted unanimously to approve
them on Wednesday. The state forestry division said in a statement it had
cooperated with the investigation but could not comment further because it had
not yet reviewed the report.

The fire marked the greatest loss of
life from a U.S. wildfire since 1933, when more than two dozen firefighters
were killed battling the Griffith Park fire in Los Angeles.

The Granite Mountain Hotshots firefighting team

CBS News

The investigation went on to
cite fire managers for failing to carry out "incident complexity
analysis" after the blaze escaped the team's initial attack, and entered
an "extremely dangerous" transition to an extended attack on the
fire.

The report, which contains the last
photos of the Granite Mountain Hotshots before they were killed, added that
critical incident management personnel "arrived late or were absent from
their assigned positions during the life-threatening transition, thereby
increasing the risk of firefighter exposure to smoke inhalation, burns and
death."

The findings differ from conclusions
drawn by a multi-agency report that was released in
September, which found no evidence of negligence or reckless behavior in the
firefighters' deaths.

At that time CBS News spoke to Julia
Ashcraft, whose husband Andrew was killed.

"What this has done is exposed
that they are not mitigating risks the way they should," she said.
"There should have been things to mitigate these risks before because this
could have been prevented."

That report, which left many
questions about the blaze unanswered, led to the filing of a notice of claim
last month on behalf of Marcia McKee, whose 21-year-old son, Grant Quinn McKee,
was among the firefighters who died in the fire.

In the claim against the city of
Prescott, Yavapai County and the state of Arizona, McKee argued that her "only
son died because the people managing the fire did not follow basic safety
rules."